Recently, a black American star has caused strong controversy in the field of American public opinion, and has even been charged with "splitting the United States".
Because, last weekend, during The American Independence Day, she sang a song called the "Black National Anthem."
The black star, Vanessa Williams, is a well-known American actor and singer, and was the first African-American woman to receive the title of "Miss America" as an American beauty pageant.
On Independence Day last week, in celebration of U.S. President Joe Biden's previous decision to officially make June Day, which commemorates the abolition of slavery in the United States, williams announced that she would sing a song called "Lift every voice and sing" at an Independence Day celebration to celebrate.
The song was created in the early 20th century by two black-American artists to commemorate the birth of former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, who "liberated the black slaves." But because the song is also full of black people's desire for freedom and equality, the song is not only widely sung among black people, but even called the "black national anthem".
(Screenshot from a US media report)
However, after Williams sang the song on Independence Day, while many blacks rejoiced, the conservative white community in the United States was angered.
Their reasoning is that the United States has only one unified national anthem, that is, the Star-Spangled Banner Song, not some kind of divisive black national anthem.
As shown in the chart below, an influential conservative white man on the American Internet is well-known to criticize Williams: "We belong to the same country, under God, inseparable, sharing freedom and justice."
Another white man, Well-known, also criticized Williams for singing the "black national anthem," saying that "this is not unity, but division."
This person also asked in his video program: Is it necessary for the United States to make an "Asian national anthem", "Latin American national anthem", and "Indian national anthem" in the future?
Even a black American politician who recognized these white conservatives thought Williams was dividing the United States, saying that "the black national anthem should belong to the black country of Africa, not to a country like the United States that exists for all."
(The U.S. media themselves admit that there is a lot of black history in their national anthem.)
This is because, if we fundamentally speak, the North American continent where the United States is located, which originally belonged to the native Indians, was snatched away by a group of white colonists on the European continent and established the United States.
When the official national anthem of the United States, "The Starry Banner", was first created in 1814, it glorified white Americans who competed with the British for "sovereignty" over the colonies of the North American continent, and had nothing to do with the blacks who were still being sold as slaves from Africa to the North American continent. Even, not only did the original lyrics of the American national anthem contain content suspected of discriminating against black people, but the author of the national anthem himself was a white slave owner.
Therefore, the fact that black people now want to sing their own "black national anthem" is certainly not a division of the United States. When the United States was founded, itself did not count blacks as its own people.
But on the other hand, Geng Zhige felt that black people like Williams, by singing this "black national anthem" to express their feelings of equality and freedom, was also a misplaced move.
This is first and foremost because the black Africans who were trafficked to the North American continent and their present descendants were not the true owners of the North American continent, only the Native Americans. Therefore, although this "negro national anthem" is originally intended to be black people who are hungry for freedom and equality, if it is called "national anthem", it seems to be "endorsing" colonialism and giving colonialism a "vassal".
Second, although the "black national anthem" was created in honor of Lincoln who "abolished" black slavery, some sober American black civil rights activists pointed out that Lincoln would do so because of the urgent need to develop capitalist industrialization and the need to release black people imprisoned on southern plantations to expand productivity.
In other words, the enslavement of blacks in the United States was not eliminated, but was changed by capitalist industrialization. Therefore, at the level of personal physical and mental development and social development, the discrimination and oppression of African blacks, a group of trafficked and stolen africans, will always exist. This is the root cause of the systemic racism that still exists in the United States.
(Pictured is Angela Davis)
"If we don't eliminate the racial capitalist system in the United States, we can't eliminate racism in the United States" - this sentence was said by Angela Davis, a well-known black civil rights activist in the United States, in an interview with a US media outlet last year.
But as early as the 1960s, Malcolm Aix, a pioneer of the black civil rights movement in the United States, saw clearly the link between capitalism and racism.
So, if blacks in america really crave freedom and equality, that may be the direction they really seek answers.
In fact, they should think about why the "black life is also life" movement they launched last year was constantly labeled by white conservatives in the United States as a "Marxist-Leninist" movement. Could it be that they are really afraid that you will choose to follow this path?